Readings for Summer Service of 22 August 2004

Our first reading is from the Association of Computing
Machinery's 1991 paper on the undergraduate computer
science curriculum.

Because computing is simultaneously a mathematical, scientific, and 
engineering discipline, different practitioners in each of the above 
nine subject areas employ different working methodologies, or 
_processes_, during the course of the research, development, and 
applications work. One such process, called _theory_, is akin to 
that found in mathematics, and is used in the development of 
coherent mathematical theories. It has the following major elements:

--Definitions and axioms

--Theorems

--Proofs

--Interpretation of results

[...]

The second process, called _abstraction_, is rooted in the 
experimental sciences, and has the following elements:

--Data collection and hypothesis formation

--Modeling and prediction

--Design of an experiment

--Analysis of results

[...]

The third process, called <em>design</em>, is rooted in 
engineering and is used in the development of a system 
or device to solve a given problem. It has the following parts:

--Requirements

--Specifications

--Design and Implementation

--Testing and Analysis

In all nine subject areas of computing, these three processes 
of theory, abstraction, and design appear prominently and 
indispensably. A thorough grounding in each process is thus fundamental 
to all undergraduate programs in this discipline.

*****************************

The second reading is a series of selections from 
_The Mathematician's Apology_ by G. H. Hardy.

"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, 
is a maker of patterns.  If his patterns are more 
permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with
ideas.  A painter makes patterns with shapes and colors,
a poet with words."

"The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's
or the poet's, must be _beautiful_; the ideas, like the 
colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way.
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in
the world for ugly mathematics."

"There are masses of chess-players in every civilized
country--in Russia, almost the whole educated population; and
every chess-player can recognize and appreciate a 'beautiful'
game or problem.  Yet a chess problem is _simply_ an exercise
in pure mathematics (a game not entirely, since psychology also
plays a role), and everyone who calls a problem 'beautiful' is
applauding mathematical beauty, even if it is beauty of a
comparatively lowly kind.  Chess problems are the hymn-tunes 
of mathematics."

"A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is
in some way 'trivial' mathematics.  However ingenious and 
intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there 
is something essential lacking.  Chess problems are _unimportant_.
The best mathematics is _serious_ as well as beautiful--'important'
if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and 'serious' expresses
what I mean much better."

"The 'seriousness' of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its
practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the
_significance_ of the mathematical ideas which it connects.  We
may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is 'significant' if it
can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large
complex of other mathematical ideas.  Thus a serious mathematical
theorem, a theorem which connects significant ideas, is likely to
lead to important advances in mathematics itself and even in other
sciences.  No chess problem has ever affected the general
development of scientific thought; Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein have
in their times changed its whole direction."

*****************************

The third reading is from an interview with the planetary scientist
Dr. Carolyn Porco, now a member of the science team for the Cassini 
probe to Saturn:

"I actually became interested in astronomy through an interest in religion
and Eastern philosophy.  I was at a very questioning stage in my early teen
years, thirteen or fourteen, I was going to a parochial school, Catholic
school, I was having a lot of religious concepts more or less shoved at me,
and I was supposed, of course, to accept them unquestioningly... I just
started to think about religion in general, about philosophy, I started to read
existentialism and the whole thing... and along with this internal questioning
I found myself one evening... waiting for the bus to go home, this is in the 
Bronx... and I am waiting at the bus station and it's bedlam, it's rush hour,
it was dark, it was a fall or winter evening, there are cars and people rushing 
everywhere and I just, you know, looked up and I saw a very bright object, I
don't know if it was Jupiter or it was Sirius, but it was a very bright object,
and I just started to mull about this, and think about, you know, what was out
there.  And so my thinking went from being very internally-oriented to being
more externally-oriented, and I started to read about planets and stars and 
galaxies and... and what the universe contained as a whole."

*****************************

The fourth reading is from a website called Quackwatch.org, which bills
itself as "Your guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions".

"The scientific method offers an objective way to evaluate information
to determine what is false. The late astronomer Carl Sagan, Ph.D.,
has pointed out that 'Science is a way of thinking much more
than it is a body of facts'. 

The following ideas can help you evaluate information you encounter
about science and health.  [There follow 18 ideas of which I have chosen 
five.]

1.  Science is a truth-seeking process. It is not a collection
  of unassailable "truths." It is, however, a self -correcting
  discipline. [...]

4.  Any new finding should be examined with skepticism. Healthy
  skepticism does not mean unwillingness to believe. Skeptics base
  their beliefs on scientific proof and do not swallow information
  uncritically.
  
9.  There often are legitimate opposing views on scientific issues.
  But it is incorrect to conclude that science cannot be trusted
  because for every study there is all equal and opposite study. [...]

17. About 80% of illnesses are self-limiting and will resolve
  in response to almost any kind of treatment. [...]

18. There is no goose that lays golden eggs. In other words,
  if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. As H.L.
  Mencken once said, "Every complex problem has a solution
  that is simple, direct, plausible, and wrong."

****************************

Our final reading is 
from Tim Berners-Lee, in his book _Weaving the Web: The Original 
Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor_ :

The parallels between technical design and social principles have
recurred throughout the Web's history. About a year after I arrived to
start the consortium, my wife and I came across Unitarian
Universalism. Walking into a UU church more or less by chance felt
like a breath of fresh air. Some of the association's basic
philosophies very much match what I had been brought up to believe,
and the objective I had in creating the Web. People now sometimes even
ask whether I designed the Web based on these principles. Clearly,
Unitarian Universalism had no influence on the Web. But I can see how
it could have, because I did indeed design the Web around universalist
(with a lowercase u) principles.

One of the things I like about UUism its lack of religious trappings,
miracles, and pomp and circumstance. It is minimalist, in a way. UU's
accepted the useful parts of philosophy from all religions, including
Christianity and Judaism, but also Hinduism, Buddhism, and any other
good philosophies, and wrapped them not into one consistent religion,
but into an environment in which people think and discuss, argue, and
always try to be accepting of differences of opinion and ideas.

I suppose many people would not classify UUism as a religion at all,
in that it doesn't have the dogma, and is very tolerant of different
forms of belief. It passes the Test of Independent Invention that I
apply to technical designs: If someone else had invented the same
thing independently, the two systems should work together without
anyone having to decide which one was "central." For me, who enjoyed
the acceptance and the diverse community of the Internet, the UU
church was a great fit.

Peer-to-peer relationships are encouraged wherever they are
appropriate, very much as the World Wide Web encourages a hypertext
link to be made wherever it is appropriate. Both are philosophies that
allow decentralized systems to develop, whether they are systems of
computers, knowledge, or people. The people who built the Internet and
Web have a real appreciation of the value of individuals and the value
of systems in which individuals play their role, with both a firm
sense of their own identity and a firm sense of some common good.

There's a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the rules
of sending packets around, we can send packets containing anything to
anywhere. In Unitarian Universalism, if one accepts the basic tenet of
mutual respect in working together toward some greater vision, then
one finds a huge freedom in choosing one's own words that capture that
vision, one's own rituals to help focus the mind, one's own metaphors
for faith and hope.